'WHAT DO we know, my friends? What do we
know?' exclaimed Gabriel, the distinguished
mining engineer, sitting down under a pine
tree near a fountain, on the slope of
Guadarrama, about six miles from the
Escorial Palace and just on the boundary line
between the provinces of Madrid and
Segovia. I know the place, the fountain, and
the pine tree very well. I can see them still,
but I cannot remember the name.

'Let's all sit down and rest here,' said
Gabriel. 'We've agreed to enjoy the lovely
weather as best we can in this charming
place, famous for the tonic qualities of this
sparkling fountain and for the picnics which
have taken place here, where great
scientists have come to observe Nature and
to find an appetite from time to time. Sit
down and I'll tell you a true story to bear
out my theory. You call me a materialist, but
I still maintain that in this world in which we
live strange things happen—things so
strange that no reason can account for
them, nor can science or philosophy give any
explanation of such things. Surely there are
more mysteries in heaven and on earth than
all our philosophy can account for—to alter
slightly the words of Hamlet.'

Gabriel was addressing five friends of
various ages, none of them very young and
only one elderly. Three of them, like him,
were mining engineers, the fourth was an
artist, and the fifth something of a writer.
All of us had come up with Gabriel, who was
the youngest, on hired mules from the
village of San Lorenzo, to spend the day in
hunting for specimens in the lovely woods of
Peguerinos, gathering interesting forest
plants under the pine trees, catching
butterflies in gauze nets, finding rare
beetles under the bark of the decayed trees,
and in all these occupations giving a fair
amount of attention to the well-filled
hamper of cold provisions and the skin of
wine, to the cost of which all contributed in
equal shares.

This was in the middle of the hot summer of
1875. I am not sure if it was the festival of
Santiago or that of San Luis, but it was a
holiday of some sort—I think San Luis. In
any case, the day was very hot, and the
shade of the pine wood and murmur of the
fountain were delicious after climbing the
mountainside. Up there, mind, heart, body,
and especially appetite were refreshed by
the pure air and the stillness, so sweet after
the busy life of the plains which we had left
far below us.

The six friends sat in the shade of the pine
trees, and Gabriel continued:

'You may call me a visionary if you like, but
it has been my fortune or misfortune in life
that I have always been regarded as a
materialist, a man of modern thought, not
believing in things unseen. In fact, a
positivist. Well, I may be so, but my
positivism includes an acknowledgment of
the mysterious influences of Nature—all the
strange and inexplicable facts which
are facts because they happen; all
the emotions of the mind which are
inseparable from the life of every reasoning
creature. I believe in all these things
because they are material and natural. They
cannot be explained, but still they happen.
Now, as to other things which are
supernatural, or extra-natural—just listen,
and then judge for yourselves. I was not the
hero of the strange occurrence which I'm
going to relate to you—but listen, and then
tell me what explanation you can give
me—natural, physical, scientific, whatever
you think will best explain the case, if
explanation is at all possible.'

II

'Perhaps you may have heard of an engineer
of Public Works named Telesforo de Ruiz. He
died in 1860.'

'No, I never heard of him.'

'I have.'

'So have I. He was an Andalusian, very dark
and handsome. He was engaged to be
married to the daughter of the Marquis of
Moreda, and he died of gastric fever.'

'Yes, that he was,' replied Gabriel. 'Well,
until about six months before he did, my
friend Telesforo was a brilliant young
man—as every one said. Tall, strong,
handsome, talented and with a first-class
diploma from the School of Mines, and
excellent prospects, he was very much
sought after in the way of his profession by
both public and private enterprises, and he
was just as much sought after in private life
by the fair sex, marriageable or unhappily
married, and even by some charming widows
anxious to tempt Providence again. One of
these was a well-known conquest of his,
who would gladly have accompanied my
friend to the altar. However, she does not
enter in this story, and indeed Telesforo
merely amused himself in her case by flirting
with her. If she did make herself a bit cheap
to him…Well, he was all the time deeply and
seriously in love with the girl to whom he
was engaged, poor Joaquina de Moreda, and
so the poor widow merely filled a temporary
gap—'

'Now, now, Don Gabriel! No scandal allowed.'

'I am not going to talk scandal. Those of you
who knew the young couple will remember
that poor Joaquina died suddenly when
taking the waters of Santa Agueda at the
end of the summer of 1859. I was in Pau
when the sad news came, and I was very
much affected because of my friendship for
Telesforo. I had only met the girl once, at
the house of her aunt, General Lopez's
widow, and her extreme pallor, almost a
bluish tint, struck me as an indication of
weak health, such as one sees in sufferers
from aneurism. But she was very graceful,
refined, and gentle looking, and in addition
to her personal charms she was to inherit
her father's title, as she was the only child,
and she would also have a good deal of
money. When I heard of her death I knew
that her sweetheart would be inconsolable,
and when I got back to Madrid, about three
weeks later, I went to see him early one
morning. He had a charming flat in the Calle
del Lobo, near the Plaza San Jerónimo. He
lived there and had his office under the
same roof.

'He looked very sad, but he was calm and
evidently master of his grief, as he sat
working with his assistants at some plan of
a railway. He was dressed in deep mourning,
and when I entered he embraced me in
silence then turned to give some
instructions to one of his staff respecting
the work in hand. I waited until, taking my
arm, he led me to his private sitting-room at
the other end of the house, saying as we
went:

' "I'm so glad you have come. I cannot tell
you how much I have missed you in my
present state of mind. Something very
strange
and unaccountable has happened to me, and
I want to tell you about it, for only a friend
who knows me as you do will be able to
judge
if I am mad or a fool. I urgently need a
sane, calm opinion, as I know yours will be.

' "Sit down here," he went on when we had
reached the sitting-room, "and don’t be
afraid that I'm going to weary you by
describing my grief, which can only end with
my life. You have not had much personal
experience of sorrow or human suffering, but
you can imagine what I suffer and must
always suffer. I do not seek or wish for
consolation now or later on, or ever in all
time. That subject is ended now. What I
want to tell you is something so strange, so
terrible, that I must speak of it to someone
of calm judgment, someone will listen and
advise me. The whole adventure is like an
awful seal set on my present misery, on
the agony of my life, and it tortures me to
the point of despair. It is all a most frightful
mystery, and I think it will alarm you too."

' "Tell me," I replied, feeling vaguely anxious
and more than half wishing that I had not
come to see my unhappy friend. His
expression of terror struck a chill to my heart
and made me fear for his reason.

' "Listen then," said he, wiping the
perspiration from his forehead.

III

' "I do not know if it is a mental twist which
I have always had, or if it is the effect of
some of those silly tales which old nurses
use to frighten children into quiet and
obedience, but ever since I was very young
nothing has caused me so much fright and
horror as the sight, or even the thought, of a
woman alone out of doors at a late hour of
the night.

' "You can testify that I have never been a
coward. Like every other man of the world, I
have always been ready to fight a duel if it
became necessary to do so, and not very
long after I had left the School of Mines I
was obliged to quell a dangerous revolt
among my workmen on my first important
piece of work with blows and even shots, so
that singlehanded I reduced them to
obedience. All my life, in Jaén, in Madrid,
and elsewhere, I was accustomed to go
about the streets at any hour of the night,
alone and unarmed, and if by chance I did
meet any late wanderers of suspicious
appearance, I knew they were merely
thieves or human prowlers in search of prey,
and I simply avoided them or let them pass
without notice. But if the solitary form was
that of a woman, walking or standing, then,
if I was alone or there was no one else in
sight, I was in the most abject state of
terror possible to imagine. You may laugh if
you like, but my agony of mind was dreadful;
I shivered from head to foot, thought of
ghosts or lost souls, apparitions from the
other world, wraiths of persons still alive; in
fact, of all the terrible superstitious ideas
which have ever been invented to torture the
credulous, and which at any other time or in
any other circumstances would have only
provoked my ridicule. Then I would hasten
by steps or turn back; I would make all kinds
of detours to avoid meeting the lonely
figure, and overcome by repulsion and
horror, I would rush back to my home, never
stopping until I was safe within its doors.

' "Once in the shelter of my own house, I
could laugh at my silly fears, and console
myself by reflecting that at any rate no one
of my acquaintance knew of such folly on my
part. I would feel sure then that as I did not
believe in fairies or witches or apparitions
of any sort there was no need to have been
frightened by the sight of the poor solitary
creature, whose want, or vice, or some other
cruel spur, had driven from shelter on such a
night and at such an hour. I felt that I should
have offered her assistance if she was in
need of it, or alms if I had waited for her to
ask me for them. But all this solid reasoning
did not prevent my acting in just the same
way when the next solitary female form
was sighted. When I was twenty-five years
of age, I met many such lonely nocturnal
wanderers, and though I had always fled
from them in the same way, I never had the
slightest reason to think that they intended
me any harm or were able to injure me in
any way, or had I ever any notable or
disagreeable adventure with any one I met
in the street late at night. But my fear was
indomitable, only vanishing when I was safe
at home and could laugh at or scold myself
for my lack of common sense. If I were not
alone of if there were other people in the
street, the case was different, for I did not
care then. The incident attracted no one's
notice, and was soon forgotten, as children
forget their terrors of the dark when they
have companions by their side.

' "Now, this brings me to one night about
three years ago. I have only too good a
reason to remember the exact date. It was
the 16th of November, at three o'clock in the
morning. At that time I was living in a little
flat in the Calle de los Jardines, near the
Calle de la Montera. The night was terribly
cold and wet, and I was alone. You will ask
me what I was doing out of doors at that
hour on a November morning. Well, you will
be surprised to hear that I had just left a
sort of gambling saloon, unknown as such to
the police, but where many people had
already been ruined. I had been induced to
go there the night before the first and last
time. Gambling was never a vice of mine,
and the inducement held out to me by the
friend who took me there, and who was a bit
of a scamp, was that I would see something
of the smart night life of the capital, and
make the acquaintance of some interesting
members of Bohemian society and
ultra-fashionable actresses and other stars
of the demi-monde, who dropped in
to win or lose a few crowns at the roulette.

' "Well, about midnight the fun waxed
furious. People of all classes dropped in,
apparently after the theatre or late
receptions; play grew high, and I, like all
novices, threw prudence to the winds, and
staked my all, winning at first and then
losing steadily, until at last, after being
severely handled by cruel Fortune, I came
away without a single coin in my pockets,
and with debts to my friend and others, the
amounts of which I had jotted down without
having any very clear idea of what they
amounted to but feeling certain that it was
utterly out of my power ever to discharge
them.

' "I was going home, half dead with
weariness, annoyance and disgust at my
own folly, freezing with cold, and also very
hungry. I did not know what to do, except to
write to my poor father, who was very ill,
asking him to send me money, and that
would not only grieve but surprise him, for
he believed that I was doing well in my
profession and already in comfortable
circumstances. Overcome by these sad
thoughts, I was just crossing the corner of
the Calle de los Peligros to reach my own
street, and was about to pass a
newly-erected house at the corner, when on
looking up, I became aware that in the
doorway, erect and still as a pine tree, stood
a very tall, large woman, about sixty years
of age, whose bold, malignant, and lashless
eyes were fixed on me like two daggers,
while her huge toothless mouth grinned at
me horribly.

' "The terror, or rather, the mad panic, which
seized on me then surpassed all I have ever
experienced previously. I stood staring at
this horrible figure, and each line of her
form, each of the smallest details of her dress, were
indelibly branded in my recollection. The
lamp at the street corner shone steadily on
the scene, and the apparition, or whatever it
might be, and I were the only occupants of
the entire street. I forgot my ruined
position, I forgot my folly of that night,
there was only room in my brain for one
thought, if thought it could be called—a
crazy terror of the woman who seemed to fill
the whole doorway beside me.

' "Oh, don't be alarmed, my friend. I was not
really mad; I am not mad now. But what will
I be if some consolation is not found for me,
some solution to my distress? It is for that
reason that I have asked you to listen to me
and to bear with me.

' "The first surprising thing about this
woman, as I must call her, was her great
height and breadth of her bony shoulders;
next the size and roundness of her
enormous owl-like eyes, the size of her
nose, and the hideous gap which served her
as a mouth, made still more hideous by the
malignant grin which should have disfigured
the fairest mouth in existence, and finally,
the strange coquetry of her dress; the
bright-coloured handkerchief which was
draped over her ugly forehead and fastened
beneath the chin, and a very small fan which
she held open in her hand, and which she
flirted in an affectation of modesty before
her face and figure.

' "Nothing could be more grotesque or
ridiculous than the sight of that tiny fan in
those enormous hands, like a sceptre of
weakness for a giantess so old, so bony, so
hideous. The same effect was produced by
the gay cotton handkerchief in contrast to
the huge deformed nose, and the coarse
face which made me ask myself for a
moment if this were not a man in woman's
dress. But no. The expression was that of a
wicked woman, of a witch, of a sorceress, of
one of the Fates, of a Fury.

' "I cannot express my exact thought, but in
that instant I felt that this was the cause
and the justification of all the unreasonable
fears which had overcome me when I had
seen a woman, however innocent looking,
alone in the street at night. It would seem
that, from my very birth, I had foreseen the
horror of this encounter, and that I feared it
by instinct, as all living creatures are given
the instinct to recognize their natural
enemies, even by their approach, before
ever they have received any injury from
them.

' "When I saw now, for the first time, this
sphinx of my whole life, I did not run
away—less through shame or manly pride
than because I dreaded unreasoningly that
my very fear would reveal to the creature
that it was I, her victim, who fled, and
would give her wings to pursue me, to seize
me, to…I could not tell what I feared. Panic
is a thing of itself, and has no form of
thought even to shape the thing it fears or
to put into words its own madness.

' "The house where I lived was at the
extreme
end of the street, which, as you know, is
very long and narrow. Not another soul was
to be seen. I was alone, utterly alone, with
that awful statue-like figure, which might
annihilate me with a word. How was I to get
away, to get home? I looked along to where
I saw the broad well-lighted Calle de la
Montera, where policemen and watchmen are
on the beat at all times.

' "Finally, I don't remember how, I resolved
to do something to escape from the horrible
obsession which dominated me—not to take
flight, but to creep by degrees down the
street, even at the cost of years of life and
health, and thus, little by little, to get
nearer and nearer to my home, exerting
myself to the utmost not to fall fainting on
the ground before I reached it.

' "I had moved slowly about twenty steps
along the street towards my house when all
at once a new spasm of terror seized me. I
did not dare stop, I could not look around,
but what if my enemy were following me?
Dare I look around? I stopped and tried to
reason calmly.

' " 'One thing or another must happen,' I
thought quickly. 'Either I have good cause
for this fear, or else it is sheer madness. In
the first case, this terrible witch is following
me, she will overtake me, and nothing in the
whole world can save me. But if this is only
a craze, a mania, an access of folly,
a groundless panic, then let me face it out,
convince myself of its unreality, and thus be
cured once for all, and never have to suffer
in this way again. I shall feel certain of my
silly conduct if I find that this poor old
woman is still standing in the doorway
sheltering from cold, or waiting for the door
to be opened. Then I shall go home, and
never again will I permit such groundless
fears to torment me.'

' "Having almost calmed myself, I stood still
and turned my head.

' "Oh, Gabriel, Gabriel, how shall I convey
my feelings to you at what I saw? The tall
woman had followed me with soundless
footsteps, she was towering over me,
almost touching me with her fan, her head
bent so that it nearly touched my shoulder.

' "Why? And why, indeed? Was she a
pickpocket? Was it a man in disguise? Or
was it only a spiteful old woman who saw
that I was frightened and wanted to terrify
me more? Was it the spectral reflection of
my own cowardice? Was it the sum total of
all the deceptions and shortcomings of our
human nature?

' "To tell you all the ideas which ran through
my mind at that moment would be
impossible. I managed to scream, which
roused me from my stupor as from a
nightmare, and I ran like a terrified child of
four year years old and did not stop until I
was in the Calle de la Montera.

' "Once there, all my fear fell away from me.
And yet the Calle de la Montera was
deserted too. I looked all along the Calle de
los Jardines, the whole of which I could see,
and which was sufficiently well lighted by its
three lamp-posts and by the reflection from
the calle de los Peligros. It would not be
possible for the tall woman to hide if she
had gone in that direction, but I give you
my word there was not a cat or the shadow
of a mouse to be seen in the whole street,
not to speak of a giantess like my
tormentor.

' " 'She has gone into some other doorway,' I
thought. 'But she will not be able to get
away without my seeing her if she moves
while the lamps are lit.'

' "Just then I saw a night-watchman coming
along the Calle del caballero de Gracia, and
I shouted to him without moving from where
I stood. To explain my call and put him on
the alert, I told him that there was a man
disguised as a women in the Calle de los
Jardines, that he had gone into that street
by the Calle de los Peligros, and must have
gone off towards the Calle de la Aduana;
that I would remain where I was if he would
go to the other end of the street, and that
in that way he would not be able to escape.
It would be well for us both to capture him,
I said, for he must be a robber or worse to
go about disguised at that hour.

' "The night-watchman did as I advised. He
went down to the Calle de la Aduana, and
when I saw his lantern gleam at the other
end of the Calle de los Jardines I went along
the other side and down the next street to
meet him.

' "Neither of us had seen anything in the
shape of a human being, although both of us
had looked into the doorway of every house.

' " 'He must have gone into some house,'
said the watchman.

' " 'I expect so,' I replied, opening my own
door, with the firm determination to change
to another street next day.

' "I ascended the stairs to my flat on the
third floor, and opened the outer door with
my latch-key. I never made my good servant
José sit up for me.

' "However, this time, he was waiting for
me. My troubles were not over yet.

' " 'Is there anything wrong?' I asked him in
surprise.

' "He seemed rather agitated.

' " 'Sir,' he said, 'Captain Falcón was here
from eleven o'clock until half-past two. He
said he would come back after daylight, and
that if you came back you were to wait up
for him, because he must see you.'

' "Those words filled me with new terrors. I
felt as if my own death were at hand.
Certainly something very serious was on
foot. My dear old father had been very ill for
a long time, and as he had seemed to be
much worse lately, I had written to my
brothers in Jaén, where all my family lived,
that if matters became very serious they
were to telegraph to my friend, Captain
Falcón, who would let me know at once what
had happened. I had no doubt now that my
father was dead.

' "I sat in an armchair, waiting for the dawn
and my friend who was to be the bearer of
sad news. How can I tell now what I
suffered in those long hours of waiting?
Three things, all of terribly painful
association, kept repeating themselves in
my mind, as being inextricably connected
with one another, standing apart from the
rest of the world in a monstrous and
terrifying group: my ruin at play, the
meeting with the tall woman, and the death
of my revered father.

' "As six o'clock struck, Captain Falcón
entered my sitting-room, and looked at me
in silence. I flung myself into his arms in a
hysterical outburst, and he said, essaying to
calm my grief:

' " 'Weep, my friend. You have indeed cause
to weep, for such a loss as this can only
come once in a lifetime.' " '

IV

'My friend Telesforo,' continued
Gabriel, after he had drained another glass
of wine, 'paused when he reached this point
of his story. After a silence of some minutes
he went on:

' "If this were all I had to tell you, you might
not find anything strange or supernatural in
it, and you might tell me what others have
told me—men of much common sense have
said that everyone with a lively and ardent
imagination has his or her pet subject of
unreasoning terror; that mine was the idea
of solitary female nightwalkers, and that the
old woman in the Calle de los Jardines was
only some poor old creature who tried to ask
me for alms when she was without home or
food, and whom I had alarmed by my own
strange demeanour; that at the worst, she
could only be an associate of thieves or
other bad characters, waiting in a quiet
street for her companions, and fearful of
their being discovered by the night
watchman.

' "I, too, wished to believe this, and after
hearing it constantly repeated I did almost
come to believe it at the end of some
months. Still I would have given years of
my life for the certainty of never again
seeing the tall woman! And now I would give
everything I have just to be able to see her
once more!"

' "But why?"

' "Just to be able to strangle her!"

' "I don't understand."

' "You will understand when I tell you that I
met her again three weeks ago, a few hours
before I received the fatal news of the death
of my poor Joaquina."

' "Well, tell me about it."

' "There is not much more to tell. It was
about five o'clock in the morning, and I had
been to an entertainment where I had not
been much entertained. I had the
unpleasant task of breaking the news of my
approaching marriage to a lady with whom I
had had a very pronounced flirtation, and
who took the news very ill. I had to stand
many reproaches and even tears when I
explained that the position was inevitable;
my resolution was taken, and my
wedding-day fixed. And at that moment,
though I did not know it, they were burying
my promised wife in Santa Agueda.

' "It was not yet daylight, but there was that
faint light in the sky which shows the night
is weakening. The street lamps had been
extinguished and the watchmen had retired
when, as I was passing by the Plaza de las
Cortes to get to my flat in the Calle del
Lobo, at the corner of the Calle de Santa
Ana who should cross my path but the
terrible woman whom I had seen in the Calle
de los Jardines.

' "She did not look at me, and I thought she
had not seen me. She wore the same dress,
even carried the same little fan as when I
had seen her three years ago. And all my
previous terror was as nothing in comparison
with what took possession of me now. I
walked quickly down the Calle del Prado
after she had passed, but I did not take my
eyes off her to make sure that she did not
turn her head; and when I reached the other
part of the Calle del Lobo I breathed hard as
if I had just breasted an impetuous stream,
and my fear giving way to satisfaction I
pressed on, thinking that I had narrowly but
completely escaped the notice of the hateful
witch, and that now I was free from her
baleful proximity.

' "But just as I was about to enter my house
a new terror stirred in me. Surely she was
too cunning to allow me to escape like this,
and she was only feigning not to notice me
in order to be able to track me with more
certainty down the dark and silent street
and thus find where I lived.

' "I stopped and looked round. There she
was just behind me, her dress almost
touching me, her wicked eyes fixed on me,
her hideous mouth distended in a spiteful
grin of triumph, as she fanned herself with
an air of languor, as though ridiculing my
childish terror.

' "That fear gave place at once to the most
senseless fury, to the rage of desperation,
and I flung myself on the vile creature,
seized her by the arms and dashed her
against the wall. I held her back by the
throat, and felt her face, her breast, the
straggling locks of her grey hair until I was
convinced that she was a human being, and
a woman.

' "She had uttered a hoarse cry of mingled
pain and rage, and pretended to weep, but I
felt that it was only pretense; then fixing
her hyena eyes on me, she said:

' " 'Why do you treat me like this?'

' "My anger died away and my fear returned.

' " 'Do you remember,' I said, 'that you have
seen me elsewhere?'

' " 'Indeed I do,' she replied sardonically.
'The night of San Eugenio, about three
o'clock, in the Calle de los Jardines.'

' "I shivered involuntarily, but I still kept
hold of her.

' " 'Who are you?' I asked. 'Why do you run
after me like this? What do you want with
me?'

' " 'I am only a poor weak woman,' she said
with a diabolical grin. 'You hate and fear me
without cause or reason. If not, will you
please tell me why you were so overcome
with fear the first time you saw me?'

' " 'Because I have hated you ever since I
was born,' I cried involuntarily. 'Because you
are the evil spirit of my life!'

' " 'So you have known me for a long time
past? Well, my son, I have known you too.'

' " 'You have known me? Since when?'

' " 'Since before you were born. And when I
saw you pass close to me three years ago, I
said to myself: "Here he is at last!" '

' " 'But what am I to you? What are you to
me?'

' " 'I am Hell,' she said, spitting in my face.
And with that she suddenly slipped through
my grips, caught up her skirts, and ran from
my sight without making the least noise as
she disappeared.

' "It would have been madness to try to
overtake her. And it was now broad daylight
and a good many people were passing in the
streets, both in San Jerónimo Square and in
the Calle del Prado. The tall woman
continued to run, or as it seemed to fly,
until she reached the Calle de las Huertas,
now gleaming in the morning sun. She
stopped there and looked back at me,
waving her fan at me in a threatening
manner, holding it closed like a dagger, and
finally she disappeared round the corner of
the last street.

' "No, just wait a moment, Gabriel. Do not
give me your opinion yet, for I have not
quite finished my strange tale, in which my
heart and my life are equally involved.
Listen to me for a few minutes longer!

' "When I reached home, whom do you think
I found awaiting me but Colonel Falcón (as
he is now). He had come to bring me the
terrible news that my love, my darling
Joaquina, all my hope of happiness and good
fortune on this earth, had died the day
before in Santa Agueda! Her unhappy father
had telegraphed Falcón, knowing what an
old friend of ours he was, asking him to
break the news to me…to me, who had
guessed that a great misfortune was in
store for me as soon as ever I set eyes on
the curse of my life. Now you know why I
want to kill the enemy of my happiness, my
born foe, that wicked old sorceress who
embodies the cruelty of my destiny.

' "But why do I talk like this? Is she really a
woman? Is she a human being at all? Why
did the presentiment of her existence weigh
on me ever since I was born? Why did she
recognize me when she saw me
first? Why have I only seen her when some
great misfortune has happened to me? What
or who is she?" '

V

'Well, my friends, I leave you to imagine
what remarks I made and what arguments I
used in the effort to calm Telesforo, for all I
said was what you are all thinking now and
preparing to tell me, to prove to me that
there is nothing superhuman or supernatural
in my story. You will tell me more than
that…you will say that my poor friend was
not in his right mind; that he must have
been always a little mad, for he evidently
suffered from the infirmity which specialists
call groundless panic or, as the case may be,
intermittent delirium; that even admitting
that all that he said about the strange
woman was quite true, still it was only a
case of a singular series of chance coincides
of dates and events; and that perhaps the
poor old woman was mad too, and was
excited by his mania. She might have been
an old rat-catcher abroad at her nightly
work, or a beggar, or a procuress—as
Telesforo said to himself in an interval of
lucidity and common sense.

'Well, you will see that I was wrong in
thinking that, as you are wrong now. The
only person who was not wrong was
Telesforo. Ah! it is much easier to talk of
madness than to find an explanation for
many things which happen on this earth.'

VI

'A few days after this conversation with
Telesforo I was obliged to go to the province
of Albacete in my capacity of mining
engineer; and not many weeks later I heard
from a contractor of public works that my
poor friend had been attacked by a very
severe gastric fever and jaundice. He was
green in hue, unable to move from his chair,
and he could not work, nor would he see any
one. His grief and melancholy were pitiable,
and the doctors despaired of his recovery.
Then I knew why he had not answered my
letters. I had to resort to Colonel Falcón for
news, and reports continued ever more and
more depressing.

'After five months of absence, I returned to
Madrid on the very day when the news of the
battle of Tetuán arrived. I remember it as if
it were yesterday. That evening I bought the
Correspondencia de España to see
the news, and the first thing my eye lighted
on was the obituary notice of my poor friend
Telesforo, and the invitation to all his
friends to attend his funeral on the following
day.

'You will readily understand that I would not
willingly fail to give him this last tribute. I
had a place in one of the carriages nearest
to the hearse, and when we alighted in the
cemetery of San Luis I noticed a woman of
the poorer class, old and very tall, who
laughed in a most unseemly manner when
the hearse arrived, and who then advanced
with an air of triumph towards the
pall-bearers pointing out to them with a very
small fan the way they were to take to reach
the open grave, which was to be my friend's
last resting-place.

'At the first glance I recognized, with grief
and fear, that this woman corresponded to
the description given by Telesforo of his
implacable enemy. She was just what he
had described, with her enormous nose, her
infernal eyes, her hideous mouth, the bright
printed cotton handkerchief over her head,
and the tiny fan, which in her hands seemed
to be the sceptre of profanity and inhuman
mockery.

'She perceived at once that I was looking at
her, and she fixed her eyes on me in a
peculiar way, as if recognizing me while she
ascertained that I recognized her, as if she
knew that my dead friend had told me all
about the scenes in the Calle de los Jardines
and the Calle del Lobo, as if defying me, as
if declaring that I had inherited the hatred
she had borne my unfortunate friend.

'I confess that the fear which overcame me
was greater than my surprise at this new
coincidence or disaster. it seemed certain
that some mysterious connection had
existed in some supernatural way between
the appalling old woman and Telesforo
before this life; but at that moment I saw
that my own life, my own good fortune, my
own soul even, were in danger if I should
inherit the strange and terrible curse.

'The tall woman began to laugh, pointing at
me mockingly with her fan, as if she had
read my thoughts and wished every one to
notice my cowardice. I was obliged to lean
on the arm of a friend to avoid falling, and
then she made a gesture of contempt or
pity, turned on her heels, and walked into
the church-yard, still looking at me with her
head turned over her shoulder. She fanned
herself and signed to me with the fan at one
and the same time, walking with mincing
steps among the tombs with a sort of
infernal coquetry, until at last I saw her
disappear for ever in the crowded heart of
that great world of the dead.

'I say "for ever" because fifteen years have
passed since then, and I have never seen
her since that moment: If she were really a
human being, she must be dead by now; and
if she were not, if she were a supernatural
creature, I feel sure that she must have
scorned me too much to persecute me.

It is not necessary for me to repeat the
remarks made by the group of friends and
comrades to Gabriel. For indeed the fact
remains that every reader will have his own
ideas and beliefs in the matter, and to use
his own judgment as to the conclusion to
which he comes. So I will say no more. I
leave it to the judgment of every one of my
readers.

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